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My week usually starts at a gallop and slows to a trot, but this was pretty much a good brisk canter Monday through Friday. Last night was a Thing, a dinner, and early this morning was another Thing, and now it’s the almost-weekend, and you guys need, if nothing else, a fresh comment thread.

The debate over the health-care bill is still going on, although it appears pretty much dead in the House. Some Republicans think it punishes too many people, and a significant number think it doesn’t punish enough. Now that’s what I call a winning coalition, but hey — whatever works.

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47 responses to “Sorry for scarcity.”

It’s hard to see how anything good can come out of the Republican domination of politics on the federal level, at least in the short to medium term. Depending on who controls things, it range from global nuclear war or merely the destruction of American civil society.

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Suzanne said on March 24, 2017 at 4:19 pm

I have to admit I am enjoying Paul Ryan squirm and explain why & how his wonderful fabulous health plan failed to get enough votes.

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Suzanne said on March 24, 2017 at 4:21 pm

I mean it’s not like the GOP haven’t had…oh, let me think…six years to draft a health plan that WOULD pass. Imagine what they could have come up with if they had had 10 or 15 years!

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Peter said on March 24, 2017 at 4:22 pm

Winning!!!! I am sick of all this winning!!! Sad!

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Jerrie said on March 24, 2017 at 4:28 pm

I watched Fox in order to fully savor the GOP defeat and heard Bret Baier say that the biggest winner today was Barack Obama. Sweet words.

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Suzanne said on March 24, 2017 at 4:34 pm

“Doing big things is hard.” – Paul Ryan.
I don’t even know where to go with that. But next time my boss asks me to do something I don’t want to do, it is my new go to quote.

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Suzanne said on March 24, 2017 at 4:53 pm

And cue Trump to say this was the plan all along, to let Obamacare implode (because it will), and then we’ll have a fabulous plan! A wonderful plan! It’ll be great!

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Charlotte said on March 24, 2017 at 4:58 pm

May the ghost of Ayn Rand HAUNT Paul Ryan’s dreams like a rapacious Baba Yaga this night and every night for being such an asshole. And thank god I have healthcare for now …

I read those Melania caviar face cream links that Nancy posted and wow, what a bunch of trashy low lifes, the lot of them.

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Ann said on March 24, 2017 at 5:28 pm

The Melania article really is delicious. Nancy was taken by the Indiana angle, but it was the Wisconsin one that drew me in. We knew John Menard was a right-wing bastard, but how delicious that he also was looking for a threesome with his other rich friends. And the bonus Trump tweet from 2013 recommending the same Milwaukee Magazine article about Menards that I always cite when asked about the company is even better.

I knew John Menard was an asshole. I didn’t know he was a perv too. I guess I haven’t been in Wisconsin long enough. It’s too bad the lumberyard at his place is so much better than anything else around here.

As my husband says about Hobby Lobby, “I wouldn’t take a dump there”. Now I can say that about Menards too. They have the worst ear worm of a TV ad jingle too

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Charlotte said on March 24, 2017 at 6:34 pm

Paul Ryan tells us what he really wanted to do “We’re not going to give up on destroying the health care system.” Really! It’s on the video! https://youtu.be/LT3Px11xN-0

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coozledad said on March 24, 2017 at 7:28 pm

Give the Republicans a break. It’s hard to jackhammer a nakedly coldhearted policy of exclusivity into a governmental framework designed to save capitalism from itself.
These motherfuckers don’t have the faintest idea Roosevelt saved them from a Stalinist revolution.

And that combination of Stalinism and American racism would have been indistinguishable from Putin’s Paneuropean fascism.

Put the fuckers in straw hats and let them pick vegetables. It’s all the bastards are good for.

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Charlotte said on March 24, 2017 at 7:46 pm

I’ve been a tiny bit Twitter-manic the past 2 hours. I can’t believe this. I really thought they were going to just fuck us all over. I mean, they’ll try again, but for now, the house I worked so hard to pay off is safe because I have health insurance with legal safeguards that means it has to cover actual care (with a subsidy that allows me to build a freelance career). I didn’t quite realize how freaked out I was (and Deborah, I imagine you and LittleBird are the same) until it actually died this afternoon. I think I have a tiny ray of hope for the first time since November.

“White” people have to rethink themselves when “white” is just a synonym for power.

There are no “white” people in this country. Only dupes who’ve been conditioned to believe in their shade, so they can pose their dumbass allegiance to the American numina.

You racists are too fucking late. You let the blacks build your country, you let them build its infrastructure, you let them design its fundamental social calculus, its music. its art and its politics.

You lost.

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Heather said on March 24, 2017 at 9:11 pm

I frankly can’t stop looking at Twitter and glorying in the Schadenfreude. Keith Ellison said we shouldn’t gloat but I think we get to gloat a little bit.

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coozledad said on March 24, 2017 at 9:22 pm

Honey. it’s all gloat from here on out. Should have been before the election, but the press was deeply, deeply concerned with people who exchanged information via email if they was Democrats. Once again NPR got to beat itself off on an election night, and Cokie Roberts got to savor one of those rare end-stage orgasms.

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Scout said on March 24, 2017 at 11:13 pm

Sorry for the double (sort of) post.

I’m not gloating, I’m basking in the glow of something going right for a change.

My daughter who graduates in less than two months and doesn’t have a job will have health insurance. Should my husband leave his job, I’d be able to get health insurance, despite all my pre-existing conditions. I’m relieved, and we would have gotten a tax break from the Republican plan. The problem is, you never know what’s around the corner when it comes to your health. You don’t know if you’ve got enough money, even if you’re fairly well off. I’ve seen too many things happen to friends who seemed healthy to not be very aware of how quickly that can change, and having health insurance meant the difference between quality care and a reasonable life for their family after they were gone, and crippling debt.

You’d think that Freedom Caucus members would know this as well. I don’t know understand them.

I’m spending a slug day in Chicago. My head is all stuffed up and my throat still hurts. Besides that it’s rainy and foggy. we were going to see a movie this afternoon but we’re probably going to skip that and go tomorrow. Yesterday it got up to 80, today it’s not real cold (44 so far) just wet. I have a hankering for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, we have no peanut butter and no bread though.

My grandmother heard what she wanted from a leader who promised simple answers to complicated questions. She chose not to hear and see the monstrous sum those answers added up to. And she lived the rest of her life with the knowledge of her indefensible complicity.

After what the Republicans did to Garland when Obama had over a year left in his term, and the fact that Trimp is being investigated by the FBI and should not be allowed to nominate a Supreme Court judge who would be that for life, Gorsuch should be filibustered. Here is a list of 13 Dems who haven’t made up their minds yet, how they’ll vote. If any of these are your senator, you might want to encourage them to resist:
Tim Kaine (VA)
Joe Manchin (WV)
Jon Tester (MT)
Michael Bennett (CO)
Amy Klobuchar (MN)
Angus King (ME)
Claire McCaskill (MO)
Mark Warner (VA)
Chris Coons (DE)
Maggie Hassan (NH)
Joe Donnelly (IN)
Bill Nelson (FL)
Heidi Heitkamp (ND)

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Deborah said on March 25, 2017 at 4:23 pm

I should have said that Trimp shouldn’t be allowed to name a Supreme for consideration until his FBI investigation is cleared up (if it ever will be).

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alex said on March 25, 2017 at 8:48 pm

Joe Donnelley’s up for re-election in 2018 and is unlikely to rock the conservative boat since he caters to the conservative vote. For what little good it does him.

He’s our Senator only because the well-funded Republican opponent he faced in 2012, who almost had it clinched, said some stupid shit about rape and edged out Todd Akin for Idiot of the Year.

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Sherri said on March 26, 2017 at 12:02 am

The South is indistinguishable from a Third World country in some ways.

Sherri @30: the reason Ryan has a reputation as a policy wonk is because members of the press are numerically illiterate, and so throwing around big numbers impresses them.

In fact, the most depressing thing about the health care debates is how dumb policy makers are. The wisecrack by a male legislator about carrying pregnancy coverage is the perfect example. It’s not appalling because it’s sexist, but because he fails to understand that this is how health insurance works: high risk and low/no risk groups all need to be covered for it to work out. Why do people not know that? We have debated dumb fake death panels and other nonsense for seven years and still know Bupkus.

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Suzanne said on March 26, 2017 at 8:27 am

The Bloomberg article highlights what I have seen across the board in any new job I’ve started in the past 10 years. There is no on-the-job training I don’t care if it’s retail, office work, maufacturing, medical, whatever. None, nada, zilch. Mainly what distinguishes the better workplaces from the really lousy is the fact that you are given computer access one day one. That this is even an issue speaks volumes. For the most part, workers are thrown into the job and if they can figure things out, great! If not, as in the article, one or two might lose a limb, but oh well. Gotta keep things moving.

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Deborah said on March 26, 2017 at 12:23 pm

Maybe I missed something, is Dexter OK? I haven’t seen his comments for a while. Hope everything is fine and he’s just taking a hiatus from the internet, or a nice long vacation somewhere warm.

I don’t think you’ve missed anything here w/ regard to Dexter; I’ve kinda been wondering what’s up, too. Especially after the day when Nancy referred to him in the actual post and he didn’t chime in with his thoughts about the topic — telemedicine and weight loss, IIRC. I assume he’s just been otherwise occupied and not visiting nn.c lately, and join you in hoping things are okay.

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beb said on March 26, 2017 at 2:49 pm

I know a guy in Tennessee, maybe I could call him a friend. A few years ago a tornado ripped through the area missing his house by a few miles. A lost of devastation all around. But he wasn’t interested in government help. The proper way to deal with this devastation was for neighbors to get together to rebuild. I didn’t have the heart to ask him how one was supposed to rebuild when has no home, no food,no clothing, no power, no money (because the bank blew away) no job (ditto), and none of your neighbors have any either? But that seems to be the conservative mind-set. The conservative can’t legislate health-care because they don’t believe in it. They don’t believe in health-care, pollution-control, worker safety, building roads,the social-safety-net. Theirs is a Dickensian work where the poor should die quickly and reduce the surplus population. They’re human only because we can’t distinguish their DNA from ours. But it’s important to remember that the repeal of the ACA failed only because a critical number of Republicans felt the replacement was still too liberal.

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Deborah said on March 26, 2017 at 3:13 pm

Beb, there were 18 Republicans who would have voted against the AHCA that weren’t part of the Freedom Caucus according to the NYT, and 15 who were part of it. So 33 would have voted no altogether, at least as of Friday. So the super conservatives weren’t the only ones who would have voted against it. It was a rotten bill, nobody liked it. I can’t get over that my rightwing sister is against government involvement in healthcare when her own daughter and son-in-law have pre-existing conditions. Her son-in-law had cancer, a pretty serious case, before he married my niece. He’s in remission now, but without insurance if he has a relapse they will probably lose everything, he’s a farmer who has carried on with a farm that has been in his family for generations. Who would wish that on their own family?

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Jakash said on March 26, 2017 at 3:18 pm

I realize that many folks around here find Bill Maher either irritating, repugnant or somewhere along that line — but this “Don the Con” take-down is pretty good: